


Lethe's Children

by time_transfixed



Category: Town of Salem (Video Game)
Genre: Anachronism, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gaslighting, Oops, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 01:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15984662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/time_transfixed/pseuds/time_transfixed
Summary: The river Lethe - drink, and forget all memory of who you are. Drink, and happily drown all your sorrows and woes. For the Amnesiac, it proves to be an unexpectedly bitter draught to swallow. In which the Consigliere has a gambling problem, and the Amnesiac is doomed from the start.





	Lethe's Children

When he first wakes in this town, he wakes to the smell of death. Oh no, not the smell of blood splattered across filthy walls or the earthen smell of dirt that lingers afterwards when they’ve dug a new grave. He wakes to the obsessive, sterile cleanness that signifies that a crime has been committed, that some spot of dirt could’ve been turned out as evidence, that there was something to hide under a world of whiteness, a world of nothing. 

That should’ve been the first clue as to the fact that something was wrong. 

The Consigliere presses sweet kisses against his mouth and whispers loving promises in his ear.

In a town where knowledge is not only the main currency of exchange, but a matter of survival, the Amnesiac is penniless and marked for death.

The Amnesiac likes to think, however, that he is one of the luckier ones. If he is the poorest man in town, then the Consigliere must be the richest, because she knows something about everybody.

She presses a wedding ring into one shaking hand, a thin, paltry band of metal for the magnitude of what it represents and a piece of parchment, the destroyed remnants of his Last Will and Testament, into the other. When he slips on the ring it is a cool and unfamiliar weight on his finger, as unfamiliar as the arm the Consigliere slings around his shoulder and the heat of another person under the covers when he sleeps. 

He asks her who he was, what he did, how they met; but really it’s just one question and one question only: what was his role?

But the one answer he truly seeks is not one she cannot give him, for all the vast resources she can employ to dig up information about others. 

She whispers in his ear at town meetings about this role or that, points out the bright Medium and the silent Vigilante. There’s no presence more comforting than hers, and for a time that’s enough to keep the itching uselessness he feels at not having remembered or recovered his role.

It doesn’t matter that she’s a Mafia member; there is no one in this town who has not been, in some way, shape or form, responsible for another’s death. It’s just the way things are in Salem.

***  
The Consigliere has been busy recently; the dark shadows that regularly inhabit her face have seemingly stretched and grown. 

It’s yet another reminder of his night time idleness. There’s little a man who doesn’t remember his role can do, but all the same the idea that he can do nothing to change or aid the outcome of the grandiose game of chess being played rankles him.

“Anything I can do to help?” He asks pausing to look over the Consigliere’s shoulder. 

“Well, yes, actually, there is,” she looks up at him. “The Godfather’s been putting more pressure lately on me about finding the Jailor, understandable really, given the way our Janitor barely managed to avoid execution a few nights ago. I’ve narrowed down the list of suspects to the three most likely candidates. I would very much appreciate another set of eyes.” 

She hands him a pile of manilla folders, clipped to a stack of messy and haphazard sketches and blurry black and white photographs. They’re from odd angles and views; the profiles are clearly hastily drawn, consistently of just a few lines. Words and numbers crawl up the sides, cluttering up the blank spaces. 

The first file lacks a photograph, but there’s a page filled with quick, half finished sketches, accentuating a strong profile and contemplative look. There’s a page of quick, scrawled notes, and there’s a clear documentation of voting patterns from the past two weeks and a quick footnote about who the subject has been associating with. Townlike behavior, but perhaps not the Jailor specifically. 

The second is a dark haired woman, who he vaguely recalls having said only two or three words at the recent town gathering. There’s something unsettling, almost accusing in her gaze, poorly represented though it may be, and he quickly flips through to the voting patterns.

The third is, for lack of a better term, odd. He’s wearing spectacles in the photograph, the lighting suggesting that it was taken around sundown. The corner of his mouth is curled in a smirk, and he’s clearly in the middle of a conversation. The spectacles are an odd addition; few people in the Town besides, perhaps, the Mayor have much time or inclination to read. There’s a strange, unfamiliar feeling welling up within him, as if he should know who this man is. 

He glances up from the file. The Consigliere is watching him with a strangely intent stare, a slight smile dancing across her face. The candlelight casts long shadows, obscuring the rest of her face from scrutiny. 

“Start with this one first, I think,” he says suddenly. 

The Jailor dies two nights later, and the Consigliere’s smile is inextinguishable. 

***  
The graveyard lends a odd sort of comfort. 

The townspeople are not of the habit of chipping names onto the gravestones as a common courtesy, unless family specifically request it. Here, on these cold headstones, people, complex individuals are reduced to their role and their alignment. It is a fitting reflection of the living as well, and this small irony never fails to amuse him. 

It’s foggy tonight, a thin sheen of mist rising and layering the entire graveyard in a subtle blanket of moisture. He runs one hand idly over the gravestones, memorizes their crevices and cracks that have been worn in by time, the creeping vines and the faded names. 

What’s interesting, is you can always tell a person’s standing in life, in their society ruled by fear, by how well kept their grave is. The Transporter, for example, was a well celebrated figure in life, loud and boisterous with a belly full of laughs, and remains a well celebrated in death. His grave is clean and looks to be regularly weeded, for moss and ivy have yet to lay claim to the stone. Somebody’s left flowers, a bright splash of color in an otherwise lifeless world.

The Escort’s grave, on the other hand, is silent. The recent rains have given rise to weeds and even a few small mushrooms, thriving as they do in the atmosphere of death. Unsurprising. A martyr who died in order to bring the Werewolf to justice, but the Town spares no passing glance for dead prostitutes. 

He wonders if he could’ve been like them, a member of the Town, slightly richer in knowledge, sleeping in a bed of ignorance and praying to God that they find the killers of the night before they instead drowned in a bed of blood. He wonders that if he was town, how he had ended up with the Consigliere, who nowadays doesn’t even pretend to try to hide her status from him as a member of Salem’s Mafia. 

He wonders what the Consigliere would say if she knew what he does when he visits to the graveyard.

There’s a small corner where the townspeople bury Mafia members and other Neutrals. Nothing more than mounds of dirt really, and the cheap driftwood used to mark their final resting places has long since been vandalized beyond recognition. Tall weeds and winding threads of ivy climb their way up, choking the memory of the evildoers of the town. 

There’s a Blackmailer buried there, hung after the Jailor started growing suspicious. The Consigliere had lingered there when she had first showed him the graveyard, brushing aside vines and ripping out weeds. Now he lingers in front of it, tracing the fading letters carved into the driftwood. He thinks, surely, it could not be coincidence that the Consigliere was so familiar, even if they been married, joined together before God and men. 

But yet again, there is no easy answer. He returns to their home, walking past the creaking gallows and the swaying noose. The wind murmurs softly, carrying with it the harsh sound of a gunshot. 

As he closes the door silently behind him, he wonders which poor member of the town will be dying tonight. 

The Consigliere slips into their bed late at night. He stirs then, and the moon is pale bright and prominent in the sky. Her breathing quickly evens out, but he lays there by her side and tries to go back to sleep. He thinks again about who he was, who he is now, and what he will do when the trials inevitably come home to roost.

He doesn’t like the blank he draws once again at all three of these questions.

“Sometimes I get the feeling that there are things you aren’t telling me,” he whispers quietly to no one at all.

He dreams of a pair of black dice, of tossing them up and having them come back down. They never land on any number other than one. 

***  
“I’m sure you’ll find something,” she says sympathetically, pouring him another cup of tea “There’s always some scrap of evidence that people neglect to clean up or destroy.” 

“Yes, people inevitably become careless.” He takes a sip of the liquid. “Is this a new flavor?” 

“Yes,” she nods, “it caught my eye the other day at the bazaar for foreign goods. Do you like it?” 

He’s suddenly overcome by a terrible fatigue. He rubs at his temples again. 

“I think I’ll turn in for the night,” he says, the edge of the chair screeching as it scrapes the floor. “Let me know if I can be of further assistance.” 

He hardly recalls, afterwards, collapsing on to the bed. 

He dreams of his parents. He dreams of someone he thinks is his mother, a pair of soothing hands sweet songs. He dreams of blood on the rug, shattered glass, and the sight of his steadfast, brave father with a smoking gun in his trembling hands and a look of uncharacteristic terror on his face.

They open their mouths and reach their hands towards him, but no words are audible. He cries out to them, and suddenly finds himself drowning, drowning in a sea of white. He holds his hand out, and instead of pulling him out, hands push him back under again. 

He resurfaces once more, takes one last glimpse of his parents through a distorted water-filled view. 

When he wakes, he can barely recall what the vague shape of their faces looked like. 

The Consigliere wraps one arm around him loosely, and he allows himself to forget, to surrender. 

***  
It’s the Lookout that stops him on his way to the market, a middle aged man with a careworn and honest face. There are deep laugh lines when he smiles, and he leans heavily on his cane. 

“Are you alright, son?” He asks. “You look a bit under the weather, is that why I haven’t seen you around as much?” 

“Ah yes,” he scratches his head, “I’ve been recovering from a rather unfortunate accident that I suffered recently. My wife informs me that I was bedridden for at least a week on end. I can’t remember anything that happened beyond three or so weeks ago.” 

“Your wife?” the Lookout raises an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware you were married. You’ve never worn a wedding ring.” 

“My wife tells me that the marriage took place not long before the accident.” 

“She seems very diligent; and with all of the evil roles running around killing a hasty wedding is understandable.” They stand there in silence as the seconds tick by, and he makes to leave, if only because here is a man who must’ve known him, yet he can barely conjure up a few words to make polite smalltalk. 

“Your father-” begins the Lookout. “Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have made it out of the war alive if he hadn’t been there to pull me out of the line of fire. If there’s anything I can do for you…”

“It’s alright,” he says

“I ran into a man today at the market,” he says casually. 

“Oh?” the Consigliere prompts, not looking up from her book. 

“I believe it was the Lookout. He looks familiar from what you’ve told me. He mentioned my father and how he fought with him in the wars. I was thinking about sitting down and asking him about my parents, maybe something will help me remember more.”

The Consigliere closes her book with a snap. “I’m glad that you’re well on the road to recovering your memory.” She reaches across the table, placing her hand on his, “Just remember, whatever you find or don’t find, I’ll be here for you.”

And he lets the warmth of the Consigliere’s steady hand distract him from the fact that he still doesn’t fucking know anything. 

But whatever the Lookout may have managed to tell him is swallowed by the howl of the Werewolf three nights later. 

***  
The Consigliere’s file cabinet is slightly ajar. 

He cannot describe what exactly the feeling is, some prickling thought of unease that whispers insidiously in the back of his head, that leads him to open the file cabinet slightly further. But he knows for a fact that the Consigliere won’t be back until well past midnight, occupied as she is these days with narrowing down the identity of the Mayor’s Bodyguard. 

The documents in the very back are crumpled, covered in a thin layer of dust. 

The oldest one is from 1889. _1_ , it reads, _Mary Eastey. Claimed Medium on the third day of the trials. Probability of being a neutral role hiding under a false claim low_. The Consigliere’s thin spidery handwriting crawls across the page, meanders around the margins so that the entire page is covered with scrawled notes and speculations.

He flips forward two years through the folders. The Escort smiles coyly back at him; the margins denote known details of her background and activities, while the long deceased Spy greets him with a scowl. Some folders are marked with flags for recruitment efforts, others still are already dead. The Consigliere is nothing if not obsessively diligent, he supposes. 

The exercise has done nothing to jog his memory, merely to remind him how dedicated the Consigliere is to her job. He moves to close the filing cabinet, but the folder sticking out slightly in the front stops him. His own name screams back at him in small bold lettering, his own solemn face staring out from smooth paper, right next to the asterisk denoting: *potential target for recruitment. 

The notes here are far more detailed than any of the other folders. There are lists of his past acquaintances, family members, even past lovers and significant others, complete with careful classifications and notes about their significance. 

And most of them, he realizes with a sinking feeling, are dead. 

Some of these the Consigliere could’ve found through a quick, illegal browsing of the town’s archives (oh, the Mayor and Jailor say they don’t spy on their citizens, but with the killers of the night out for blood, what did a bit of surveillance hurt?). 

Some of these are too detailed for even the most obsessive of town surveillance. 

There’s a terrible feeling welling in the back of his mind, a terrible feeling that seems to make perfect sense and yet not enough sense at all. His knees feel too weak all of sudden; he wonders how long he has been crouching there with the folders. 

And really, wasn’t it convenient that all evidence of who he might’ve been has either been destroyed or too vague to be absolutely useless? Wasn’t it convenient that the only one who claimed to have known him intimately before he lost all memory of it was the Consigliere?

He thinks of everything the Consigliere puts in front of him, tea, coffee, food. 

Now that he thinks about it all, standard head trauma shouldn’t have so irrevocably destroyed all of his long term memory. 

(Most of all, he curses his own naïveté, for not thinking at all.) 

That night he dreams of their wedding. He’s wearing a scratchy suit that constricts his throat, like invisible hands wrapped firmly around the throat. The three little children pass by, throwing wilting lilies and shriveled violets, but they stumble and fall, tripping over long skirts and fabrics. 

The carpet is a bright red, and it’s only as he sees the Consigliere walking down the altar looking absolutely radiant in a dress of ethereal white, which drags on the floor with red bleeding into the once pristine color, that he realizes that the carpet is actually blood. There’s a pair of dice hanging from her ear and they bounce and jiggle as she wades through the disgusting mess of a carpet. 

He turns towards what should be his best man, but there’s nothing, nothing but a sea of white where the man’s face should be. The ringing of the church bells is suddenly far too loud in his ears, drowning out the sounds of his own cries. 

***  
The mug of tea placed in front of him suddenly seems too innocuous. Innocent, and the sight of the clear liquid makes him sick. 

“What have you been doing to me?” He demands, though his voice inadvertently cracks. “Memory is a fickle thing isn’t it? How long have you been poisoning my mind?” 

The Consigliere looks so confused that for a moment his resolve falters. “What are you saying?” She asks, running a hand through her hair agitatedly. “Are you alright? You look slightly feverish. Maybe you caught a chill last night in the graveyard.” 

He knocks over the damned mug of tea onto the table, watching as it seeps slowly into the ancient wood table. He searches inevitably for a powder, for something, and he swears it’s not just his imagination when something other than crushed tea leaves stains the bottom of the cup. 

The chair scrapes the floor. “Why don’t you go and rest?” She frowns concernedly at him. 

It’s raining outside, and the wind buffets him as he opens the door. He hears the sound of the Consigliere calling after him, a rustle of cloth, and before he can regret it any further, he slams the door shut and takes off running towards the town square. Dark clouds cover the moon, and the dim light of the gas lamps is the only thing that lights his way, prevents him from stumbling along in the dark. 

He may have been knowingly complicit in hiding the identity of one or several mobsters, but right now he’d rather face the possibility of the noose than spend another second with the woman who had so cruelly twisted the knife in his heart. 

(He refuses to entertain the possibility that he’s wrong. He should’ve known that waking up with no memory at all was too severe an impediment to be an accident, should’ve known that it was too good to be true to have such a beautifully cunning and reliable spouse, should’ve known that someone never meant for him to recover his memory in the first place.) 

The Sheriff works late hours he knows, because of how exhausted the Sheriff looks everytime a town meeting is called. And sure enough, the man still occupies the seat behind his desk. He looks up in alarm at the sight of the Amnesiac, likely looking haggard and wild and desperate.

He cuts the Sheriff off before he can say anything, but spills everything he knows about who the Consigliere and what she’s done, spills everything about the dreams and the little uneasy things that didn’t add up, and _please you have to help me, have to arrest these people_.

“Please, you have to listen to me,” his voice comes out more desperate than even he thought possible, hoarse from his incoherent ramblings. He hopes to God that they make some semblance of sense, that he does not just sound like a madman (because really, what other evidence besides his own intuition and the Consigliere’s files does he have in support of his idea of what happened

“Excuse me, officer,” the sound of the Consigliere’s voice breaks through his fog of desperation. He shivers involuntarily and pulls the corners of his tattered coat closer to himself as a blast cold air from the rainstorm blows in. He pivots slowly, gingerly, to look upon this new yet old dimension of his nightmare, who is followed closely by a man who he knows to be the Mafioso. 

The Consigliere surges forward, wrapping her arms around him in a mockery of an embrace. 

“We were so worried!” she exclaims passionately, “You didn’t come home on time and you weren’t where you usually are…

His skin crawls and he swallows the unpleasant taste in his mouth, pushing her away shakily. To her credit, the Consigliere is nothing if not adept at feigning shock and hurt at his rejection. 

“My apologies, officer,” she says, turning towards the Sheriff, “It’s just, my husband has become slightly paranoid since the trials and all the death and nasty business started. His father was a Veteran, you see, it runs in the family. He’s become convinced that I and our friends are in cahoots with the Mafia.” 

“It’s them,” he rasps out, plainly, urging the Sheriff to do something, hoping to God that he doesn’t sound like a madman, “they’re the Mafia, they’ve been doing something, I don’t know what, but I can’t remember anything past two weeks ago, please -”

“Of course, Investigator,” the Sheriff says easily. “I’m sorry for your husband’s current mental state; all the recent killings and the resulting paranoia are enough to drive anyone mad. Have you seen the Doctor about getting a calming draught or tonic? With this uneasy climate, the Doctor’s probably gotten a lot of those requests.”

The corner of the Consigliere’s lower lip twists down and she wrings her hands. “I had no idea it had gotten this bad. We’ll be arranging to see the Doctor soon, I think.” 

The Sheriff nods sympathetically, patting him on his shoulder kindly, “Off with you then; a couple soothing cups of tea and you’ll feel much better.”

“We’ll be on our way,” the Consigliere replies, gripping his upper arm and gesturing for the Mafioso to do so on his other side. 

The downpour has stopped by now, reduced instead to a light drizzle. He shivers again in his damp clothes. The three of them walk in silence, though the viscerally tight grip the Mafioso keeps on his arm and the way the fingers on his free hand twitch sporadically towards his side indicate his stance on the issue. The Consigliere’s face is unreadable. 

The rain picks up again, and the Mafioso abruptly quickens his pace and shoves him into a nearby alleyway. One hand slams him against the wall, the other goes to remove the gun concealed beneath his coat. 

He struggles, of course, but the Mafioso is a trained killer, and his muscles have long since atrophied from lack of doing anything more strenuous than walks in the graveyard by moonlight. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” The Consigliere demands, genuine anger bleeding into her voice. 

“I think, and the Godfather will agree with me, I’m sure, that you’ve gotten far too comfortable playing house with a man who can’t contradict you. One might even go so far as to say you’re fond.” There’s cold metal being pressed under his chin, and the Mafioso’s finger twitches towards the trigger. 

“As you’ll recall, my ‘playing house’ was the reason we eliminated the Jailor before he had our Janitor executed,” the Consigliere replies acidly, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides. 

“Your last little gamble with the Disguiser may have paid off, but this gamble of yours very nearly got the both of us hung. If you were any less ‘confirmed’ amongst the Town…”

“If you kill him now and they uncover his role, who do you think the Sheriff will be the first to interrogate? It’s a waste to scrap this particular project now, especially when it’s still salvageable. One more trial, I think, and I’ll be able to obtain more conclusive results.” 

The gun’s shoved back into the Mafioso’s pocket so hard that the Amnesiac could’ve sworn that a few of the seams on his coat are ripped in the process. 

“Have it your way then,” the Mafioso growls. “Be it on your head when you inevitably end up either wasting our time by turning the poor bastard’s brains into mush or killing us all when he runs to the Mayor and blabs all our secrets.” 

The Amnesiac tries to make a quick run for it, hoping against hope that there will be someone, the kindly Doctor, the Vigilante, or even the Survivor if he isn’t already in the pockets of the Mafia, somebody who can get him out of this nightmare landscape. 

The Mafioso lets out a harsh curse. There’s the sound of splashing water behind him and he runs faster, he needs to run faster...

He doesn’t dream of anything, nothing but a numbing cold settling in. He curls deeper into himself and wishes that it would go away. 

*** 

The morning sun is shining faintly through the blinds when the Amnesiac resurfaces again from the sea of white. There’s a faint dampness lingering on the covers, signalling that he had not been out for that long. 

Next to him, the Consigliere stirs. She shifts the book in her lap to the ancient stand next to her. “Tea? Well, perhaps not.” She gives him a wry smile. 

He flinches away weakly, tries to get to his feet. The world does three rapid turns in the space of three seconds.

“Sorry,” she says, rubbing soothing circles in the small of his back, “I think the Mafioso hit you a little too hard on the head, which given your condition, is the last thing you need.” 

“And whose fault is that?” He croaks out, throat dry and already hoarse from the events of the night. 

“Oh, love, I had no idea that you would be driven to such lengths. Do you really hate me so much that you would see me dead?” The Consigliere looks so genuinely hurt that he wants to wrap his arms around her in comfort as much as he wants to wrap those same hands around her throat.

“What you’ve done-” he starts, but she cuts him off with a finger to his lips. 

“I just wanted us to be happy. Why couldn’t we be together like this, instead of being constantly at odds? Isn’t it better like this? You have a choice now.” 

“You robbed me of my role. My memory. My entire identity,” and yes, he’s mustering the same intensity of emotion as he had the night before, but the desperation has been replaced with a boiling anger. 

“So what? Leave you with your role so you can work with people you don’t like, hang people you don’t hate? Sad isn’t it, that this Town has come to dictate our role as the defining aspect of our identity?

She sighs. “I was supposed to have put you under again. Try to wipe your memory again and start over. Do you know why I didn’t?” She’s leaning forward now, her long hair brushing against his bare skin. He shivers involuntarily. 

She’s so close to him, and they are alone in their home. There’s no town gathering scheduled for today and it’s still early enough that there won’t be many up at this time. And he lunges forward, his hands digging into the soft flesh of her neck. 

She gives him a smirk, even as he tightens his grip on her pale neck, and he could squeeze further, could squeeze the life out of this woman. “Go on,” she challenges, chokes out in small packets of breath, “kill me if you can.” 

And then he’s letting go, his hands shaking again. The Consigliere gasps and splutters for breath, but the smirk on her face is immovable. 

“You still can’t do it. Even after everything you think I’ve done, you still can’t do it.” 

She’s smiling now. “You’re still so defiant, even though everything but the bare bones of personality has been stripped away, and you're so _confused_.

There’s been an open position among the upper echelons of the Mafia since I hung the Disguiser. It’s still open, open to you, if you can forgive me the mistake I made. I just wanted you on my side, was that so bad?” She reaches a hand out to him, fingers outstretched.

He looks at her, and though he cannot recall what the weight of a gun must feel like or what the long nights spent with the Jailor must’ve been like, he can recall what the warmth of the Consigliere’s hand feels like. He hasn’t even removed his wedding ring yet, that glaringly false object of gold; it’s become a comforting presence, a constant reminder that there was _someone there_. 

Most of all, he’s so tired of fighting, so tired of the sleepless nights in the graveyard, of wondering who the next death would be. 

And he has been happy with the Consigliere, and despite everything she hasn’t even tried to deny, the terrible, terrible things she’s done, he does not hate her, could not hate her. 

He could walk back into the Town right now, could join them, embrace them openly. But what was there left for him in this God forsaken town, what was there left for him but dirt and ashes and this awful, clever, beautiful woman?

And he takes her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Insipired by the thought that it must take one hell of a traumatic event or experience to induce the level of amnesia we seem to see portrayed in the Amnesiac role. 
> 
> Why didn't the Consigliere just tell amne he was *insert dead Mafia role here* when he first woke up? Idk good question. 
> 
> I ended up scrapping the ending several times; I'm still not really happy with how the entire story turned out. Writing is too hard, and I need more sleep.


End file.
